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AGU Fall Meeting 2007 - Session on Past Climate Forcings

One of the values of paleoclimate reconstructions is that they provide scenarios different from todays climate, which can be used to validate climate models. This entails particularly high demands on the accuracy and resolution of records of past climate forcings.

This session addresses the challenge to improve and extend time series of climate forcings and feedbacks, both natural and human-made, including solar insolation and irradiance intensity, volcanic activity, land use, and greenhouse gas and aerosol concentrations. Accurate reconstructions of the climate forcings allow climate system models to be used to quantify the sensitivity of the climate system, spatially and temporally, and to understand the natural, forced and unforced, variability of the climate system. It allows us to put the present, past climate changes, and projected future climate changes in context.

The session invites contributions of new data of or methodological innovations for forcing reconstructions as well as model studies that highlight climate sensitivities or attributions of climate change to paleo-forcing records.